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Call me crazy but I don't think we should try to flash PC GTX285 cards. EVGA went out on a limb to bring Mac Users the most powerful single GPU card to the mac, if we flash their PC cards they won't see the sale as a MAC sale and will be less likely to bring future cutting edge cards to the Mac. Besides the difference in price is really NOT that much. Sure it could be useful if you ALREADY have a PC version, but if not, just buy the Mac version and let EVGA and Nvidia know there is a market for such products. Just my 2 cents.

You seen the cost of those cards in the UK right now?
 
I am stuck in chicken vs egg on this. I have installed refit and with a Mac card in place the refit screen comes up and I can pick one of three OS and refit shell. Fine so far.

If I turn off the Mac 285 and leave only the PC285, and reboot, the screen just stays dark as before - refit does not drive the PC card by itself, so I cannot run the shell and load the rom (which I have moved to the refit folder).

Maybe one can create a script to automate that - but without a Mac card to start off with how would one do it?

The plan was - remove injector, install both mac and pc cards, do that commands in efi shell, then boot osx, and check if pc's card work
 
The plan was - remove injector, install both mac and pc cards, do that commands in efi shell, then boot osx, and check if pc's card work
Yes, it was ment more to help those with a ATI(Mac) card and a PC GeForce card, as a work a round for the injector not working.

But, it's nice that you did try it for us 10THzMac, while it does not help you, it does help others.

That's what the Mac is all about, Mac users helping Mac users, better Use their Mac.:apple:
 
I think I understand - ATI boot + PC 285. If I get time to take my mac to pieces again I can try this. I knew I was missing a basic point here!
 
First Mac Vid card with 2Gb of VRAM working !!!

At least I think it is.

I got ahold of a 2Gig EVGA GTX285. Using the Injector and the card boots right up !!!

The OGL Extension Viewer correctly reports RAM at 2048.........so I tried to fix the amount from Info.plist, per Netkas' instructions.

The card showed up with same amount of VRAM as before !!! I changed 00000020 to 00000008 and rebooted to see 512 Megs still. Even if I got the Endian value messed up, the amount should have changed, yes?

So maybe the VRAM value is coming from somewhere else.

Next....we need to figure out how to "Sew" Nvidia ROMs together as we did with 4870, otherwise this card will likely only show it's potential when using injector.

Where's that pipolomo42 guy?
 

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Next....we need to figure out how to "Sew" Nvidia ROMs together as we did with 4870, otherwise this card will likely only show it's potential when using injector.

I'm not sure what you mean, if you are thinking that the NVDA EFI ROM has pointers to the Bios side, like the ATI cards, I don't think it does.

I think the OS X Runtime Drivers do Read the NVDA VGA Bios, and set some values, but I'm not sure.

The NVStrap is read and used, however I think this is part of PCI Sig, not VGA Bios,or rather the EFI Rom does have Pointers to the NVStrap.

Also, I think the NVStrap has changed, two bits were added to the Ram Values, to accommodate for larger Vram Sizes, Seem 3GB is the Max now, however this has Pushed the Device ID Strap, so changing the Device ID has changed.
 
I can tell you this, as recently as the 8800GT the Nvidia ROMs got clocks and fan speeds from the PC portion of BIOS.

I spent a bunch of time fiddling with G92 ROMs. If I changed clocks in Nibitor and reflashed the card's scores would go up proportionally in OSX.

Do you have some reason to believe that G200 is different?

I guess to know for sure we need to run an EFI GTX285 in OSX and mod it's BIOS speeds, reflash, and see if OSX speeds change.

Maybe Netkas has been able to decipher some of that EFI ROM?
 
i think the vram value reported by sys info is purely cosmetic and irrelevant, have 2g palit card and sysinfo reports 512k. Cuda finds whole 2G no problem.
 
I can tell you this, as recently as the 8800GT the Nvidia ROMs got clocks and fan speeds from the PC portion of BIOS.

I spent a bunch of time fiddling with G92 ROMs. If I changed clocks in Nibitor and reflashed the card's scores would go up proportionally in OSX.

Do you have some reason to believe that G200 is different?

I guess to know for sure we need to run an EFI GTX285 in OSX and mod it's BIOS speeds, reflash, and see if OSX speeds change.

Maybe Netkas has been able to decipher some of that EFI ROM?

Yes, I agree, the PC VGA Bios, does play a part, but I was under the impression that you were thinking that the EFI Rom was reading and setting these values at BOOT time.

I don't think that it is, or at least not based on static values( Pointers ). If the EFI Rom is, I believe it's based on Dramatic Values.

The OS X RUNTIME Drivers are reading Values from the PC VGA Bios, such as the Pref Tables. I don't think it's built in the Device Tree at Boot Time.

So, it's not like the Radeon 47xx EFI Rom, where you need to have key values in static offsets in the VGA Bios.

I do think that the 285GTX EFI ROM is not as tight of Code, however, it's a UGA ROM Module, and should work on all GTX 2xx cards that are on the Market, as you found with the 9800 GTX+(55nm), if they dye shrink, it may well not work.( You need the 9600GT or 9400 IGP Module form the 1.7 Firmware update CD, for the 9800GTX+ as it's Core Arch is the same.)

The Real test, is to Flash only the EFI ROM to the Card, and see how OS X reacts to the lack of the Perf Tables in the VGA Rom, and if the Card Boots at all.
 
I think it MAY be possible to write a ROM for the 2 Gig cards in a 64bit machine but since I don't have one, it will be difficult to test and do.

I would like to figure out a 32bit ROM for 1st Gens but I am gonna need help.

I did finally figure out how to mod Netkas' ATY_INIT to get the 2 gigs to show up.
 

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I did finally figure out how to mod Netkas' ATY_INIT to get the 2 gigs to show up.
Interesting that it is actually reporting -2048 (MINUS). Xdarwin, who wrote CoreVidia (new nvdarwin) had same issue with 2G cards. I use his injector under Snow and putting in the 2G setting produced -2G!
 
That same "-" symbol was already present in the OpenGl Extensions Page.

I too am intrigued what it signifies.

Especially so since one is "cosmetic" and comes from a HEX value in a kext.

And the other is "correct" or read from the card.

Has to be something about how the number itself appears.
 
I think it MAY be possible to write a ROM for the 2 Gig cards in a 64bit machine but since I don't have one, it will be difficult to test and do. I would like to figure out a 32bit ROM for 1st Gens but I am gonna need help.
The latter would be huge service to early Mac Pro users and well worth the overhead of a bit of soldering. It would result in +ve sales for card makers as well so would probably make everybody happy.

Can I just double-check with you directly - do you know for sure, from any source, the type and SIZE of the chip on the PC EVGA 2G 285 - are we sure that would also need some soldering?
 
That same "-" symbol was already present in the OpenGl Extensions Page.

I too am intrigued what it signifies.

Especially so since one is "cosmetic" and comes from a HEX value in a kext.

And the other is "correct" or read from the card.

Has to be something about how the number itself appears.

looks like apple used int32 type for vram size (signed 32-bit integer range from -2gb to 2gb) and looks like you see type overload

decrease valu by 1 and should works better :)

Apple need to fix it to be unsigned int
 
We recently received a drivers for gt200/gt200b chips, if anyone is interesting in getting geforece gtx working in macpro - lets try.

you will need an injector, for example this one - http://netkas.org/?p=107 .

and drivers itself, from evga site - http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100725204

it checks for macpro model (3,1 and 4,1), so if u have 1,1 or 2,1 - use pacifist application to extract kexts from pkg and install them with kexthelper application

I have a Mac version of the 285, could I just use the kexthelper app to "fix" the kext's in the driver install to allow this card in to my 2,1 Pro?
 
You will need to use the drivers AND Netkas package AND an additional Nvidia card.

For all intents and purposes, you will be running a PC GTX285.

The flashed 285 I created worked just like a PC 285 in My First gen.

When teck2000 brought his 3,1 over it ran as a Mac card.
 
I've run the injector install program and installed the EVGA drivers using Pacifist on my 2006 MacPro. I have a BFG GTX285OC in slot 1, and the original Nvidia 7300 card in slot 2. If I boot with my monitor connected to the 285 card I get the "bong" and a black screen. If I connect the monitor to the 7300 card, I get the Apple logo and after a few moments, a kernel panic. I am at a complete loss as to where to proceed from here. The GTX285 works fine when I boot into Windows 7
 
Very odd.


The 7300 is the ONLY Nvidia card we weren't sure about.

I always use slot 3, it allows the GTX285 to have airflow and slot may make a difference. (I think it did when people were running 7800GTs via the 7300 EFI)

So try putting 7300 in slot 3.

Also, be 100% certain that you install drivers right. The little install fix I did worked beautifully, including "1,1" in the install plist.
 
What install fix? I found one where the version checking was removed, but it still came out and said it couldn't be installed on my machine. Thanks in advance for a fixed install package, I installed them via Pacifist and might have screwed it up. I will try moving the 7300 to slot 3 also.
 
1st Gen Install Package

So I am attaching the current GTX285 Install Fix to allow it to install on ONLY the Mac Pro 1,1 and 1,2.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A MAGICAL PACKAGE !!! It will only allow these machines to use a GTX285 when used WITH Netkas package AND with another Nvidia card with EFI.

You will need to download the F16 drivers package and drag the actual package to your desktop. Right click to see contents and replace the "distribution.dist" with the one I have attached here.

Since I don't actually have a 2,1 to test on, please let me know if it works.

Method courtesy a hint from Cuda.
 

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So I am attaching the current GTX285 Install Fix to allow it to install on ONLY the Mac Pro 1,1 and 1,2.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A MAGICAL PACKAGE !!! It will only allow these machines to use a GTX285 when used WITH Netkas package AND with another Nvidia card with EFI.

You will need to download the F16 drivers package and drag the actual package to your desktop. Right click to see contents and replace the "distribution.dist" with the one I have attached here.

Since I don't actually have a 2,1 to test on, please let me know if it works.

Method courtesy a hint from Cuda.


Ok..I installed the new 2,1 fix into the F16 drivers.

Those installed fine.

Then did the kext injector...its there, but my Pro boots to the Grey Screen Of Doom "You need to restart your computer..."

7300 card is in slot3, and machine works fine once I remove the Mac Version 285 from the system..was in slot1

Hmm..now whut?
 
Grasping at straws here:

1. You are running 10.5.7 aren't you - 285 drivers won't work without it?
2. Have you tried permuting slots again - I always use boot card in slot 1 now
3. Have you done anything manual with the kext - if so the permissions might have gone off and the latest kext helper might be in order or a re-install.

I had many grey death screens before realizing that my hacked kexts were not permissioned.
 
Grasping at straws here:

1. You are running 10.5.7 aren't you - 285 drivers won't work without it?
2. Have you tried permuting slots again - I always use boot card in slot 1 now
3. Have you done anything manual with the kext - if so the permissions might have gone off and the latest kext helper might be in order or a re-install.

I had many grey death screens before realizing that my hacked kexts were not permissioned.

Will go check right now.

10.5.7, yup
Will try Slot1
No manual edits at all.

===

Moving 7xx to slot1, boots. The Expansion slot utility loads..and sees the 285. Yay!

Now..it seems that since I cant ue the 285 in a x16 slot, that Profile #3 to make slots 1 and 2 both x8 slots..would then be best., or even config option 4.

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opengltest.tiff
 
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